CEMETERY PATH

Leo Rosten
Ivan was a timid little man—so timid that
the villagers called him “Pigeon” or
mocked him with the title, “Ivan the
Terrible.” Every night Ivan stopped in at
the saloon which was on the edge of the
village cemetery. Ivan never crossed the
cemetery to get to his lonely shack on the
other side. The path through the cemetery
would save him many minutes but he had
never taken it—not even in the full light of
noon.
Late one winter’s night, when bitter
wind and snow beat against the saloon,
the customers took up the familiar
mockery. “Ivan’s mother was scared by a
canary when she carried him in her
womb.” “Ivan the Terrible—Ivan the
Terribly Timid One.”
Ivan’s sickly protest only fed their
taunts, and they jeered cruelly when the
young Cossack lieutenant flung his horrid
challenge at their quarry.
“You’re a pigeon, Ivan. You’ll walk
all around the cemetery in this fiendish
cold—but you dare not cross the
cemetery.”
Ivan murmured, “The cemetery is
nothing to cross, Lieutenant. It is nothing
but earth, like all the other earth.”
The lieutenant cried, “A challenge,
then! Cross the cemetery tonight, Ivan,
and I’ll give you five rubles—five gold
rubles!”
Perhaps it was the vodka. Perhaps
it was the temptation of the five gold
rubles. No one ever knew why Ivan,
moistening his lips, said suddenly: “Yes,
Lieutenant, I’ll cross the cemetery!”
The saloon echoed with their
disbelief. The lieutenant winked to the
men and unbuckled his saber. “Here,
Ivan. When you get to the center of the
cemetery, in front of the largest tomb,
stick the saber into the ground. In the
morning we shall go there. And if the
saber is in the ground—five gold rubles to
you!”
Ivan took the saber. The men
drank a toast: “To Ivan the Terrible!” They
roared with laughter.
The wind howled around Ivan as
he closed the door of the saloon behind
him. The cold was knife-sharp. He
buttoned his long coat and crossed the
dirt road. He could hear the lieutenant’s
voice, louder than the rest, yelling after
him, “Five rubles, pigeon! If you live!”
Ivan pushed the cemetery gate
open. He walked fast. “Earth, just earth…
like any other earth.” But the darkness
was a massive dread. “Five gold rubles…”
The wind was cruel and the saber was
like ice in his hands. Ivan shivered under
the long, thick coat and broke into a
limping run.
He recognized the large tomb. He
must have sobbed—that was the sound
that was drowned in the wind. And he
kneeled, cold and terrified, and drove the
saber into the hard ground. With his fist,
he beat it down to the hilt. It was done.
The cemetery…the challenge…five gold
rubles.
Ivan started to rise from his knees.
But he could not move. Something held
him. Something gripped him in an
unyielding and implacable hold. Ivan
tugged and lurched and pulled—gasping
in his panic, shaken by a monstrous fear.
But something held Ivan. He cried out in
terror, then made senseless gurgling
noises.
They found Ivan, next morning, on
the ground in front of the tomb that was in
the center of the cemetery. His face was
not that of a frozen man’s, but of a man
killed by some nameless horror. And the
lieutenant’s saber was in the ground
where Ivan had pounded it—through the
dragging folds of his long coat.